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MEMORIAL ADDRESS 



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HORACE CHILTON, 



ON THB 



LIFE AND CHARACTER 



OF 



HON. ISHAM G. HARRIS 

(Late a Senator from Tennessee), " 



IN THE 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



MARCH 24, 1898. 



WASHINGTON. 
1898. 



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MEMORIAL ADDRESS ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 
OF HON. ISHAM G. HARRIS. 



Mr. CHILTON. Mr. President, while I did not know Senator 
Harris with the intimacy of long personal association, I have 
since a boy been familiar with his writings, speeches, and public 
conduct. 

The State in which I live has been supplied abundantly from 
the great State of Tennessee. Many of our best citizens emigrated 
to Texas from that Commonwealth; and 1 have noticed that they 
all seem to know and to love Isham G. Harris. 

So when I first came to the Senate for a short term by appoint- 
ment of the governor, more than six years ago, I felt that curiosity 
about Senator Harris which always animates younger men to 
know the actors in great events, sharpened by the recollection of 
stories told concerning his achievements by those who had long 
been his personal friends. 

When I first saw him, in 1891, he was well ripened and proba- 
bly at his best. 

I have often watched him, in the cloakroom, in his Senatorial 
seat, in the chair of the presiding officer, and he always seemed 
the same. I do not remember ever to have heard him laugh aloud. 
There was the twinkle in the eye, the manifest enjoyment in the 
general merriment, but he never appeared to " turn himself 
loose." 

I picture him as he would come into the Senate Chamber. There, 
in his familiar place on the right of the Vice-President, in the 
front row, he would take his seat. He hardly seems to say any- 
thing as if by previous design. He seems never to make an occa- 
sion, but to find it in the current proceedings as set on foot by 
others. He seems to spy out that something is taking an irreg- 
ular direction and that he must set it right. He first asks a ques- 
tion or calls for the reading of some document, as if he imper- 
fectly understood it. Then he proceeds to clear up all doubts. 
First emphasis, then gesticulation — no, not in succession, but an 
indescribable combination of emphasis and gesticulation. 

415C 3 



Attention has often been called to his ahsolute primacy in the 
Senate on all questions relating to parliamentary law. Up to the 
very hour of his last appearance here he was so clear and so mag- 
isterial that he never lost his authority in that field. 

As has been stated, his service in Congress began in the House 
of Representatives at the session which convened in December, 
1849, and in that his first session of service he exhibited that pe- 
culiar interest in questions of legislative practice which marked 
his long Senatorial career, for the reporter makes the following 
observation touching the proceedings of a particular day: 

Some conversatiou followed on points of order, in which Messi-s. Haruis 
of Tennessee, White, Disney, Rumsey, Wentworth, and the Speaker partic- 
ipated. 

During his four years in the Hou.se I find that he made only one 
set speech. The Wilmot proviso, with all its exciting incidents, 
was then the subject of consideration. In that speech we find 
the same principles, the same habits of thought and manner, which 
marked his life fifty years afterwards. There was brevity, for, 
though the contest was prolonged and the temptation to digress 
great, he spoke but an hour. There was the strict construction of 
the Constitution, for he dwelt on the rule that Congress possesses 
no powers except those expressly delegated by the Constitution or 
necessary to the exercise of some expressly delegated power; and 
he, who rarely ever quoted, repeats in that speech the words of 
another great American in protest against those " vagrant, wan- 
dering powers that find no congenial spot on which to rest upon 
the broad face of the Constitution of the country." 

This was his chart of political action in every place of duty. 
He followed it after leaving Congress in 1853, and it governed his 
action during all those stirring years which led up to the civil 
war. 

Perhaps the most eventful part of the life of Senator Harris 
was that which related to the great organization of secession. 
The governors of the Southern States in 1861 were almost with- 
out exception men of strong character and ability. The most 
remai'kable of these governors were Brown of Georgia, Letcher 
of Virginia, Sam Houston of Texas, and Harris of Tennessee. 

In the difficulties of their surroundings and in vigor of intel- 
4156 



lectual comprehension the Texas and Tennessee governors stand 
highest among this group. 

Sam Houston was a strong Union man. The whole secession 
movement was resisted by him, but, notwithstanding his extraor- 
dinary powerin Texas, he found himself gradually submerged by a 
rising wave of public sentiment, which finally reached the velocity 
of a torrent, drove him out of the governor's chair, and took the 
State out of the Union. There was the spectacle of a man who 
had been strong in the affections of his State overridden by an 
excited and determined people, and unable, with all his popularity 
and influence, to make the slightest headway. He stood almost 
alono, a Unionist and a conservative, in the midst of organized, 
indignant, irreconcilable revolution. 

The situation of Governor Harris in Tennessee was quite a 
different one. He sympathized with secession, he wanted to take 
his State out of the Union, and he used his powers and his influ- 
ence to accomplish the very result which Sam Houston had en- 
deavored to obstruct in Texas. His task was not like that which 
fell to the hands of the governors in States like South Carolina, 
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, where both the people and 
the executive, with common impulse, hailed the banner Of a new 
confederation. On the contrary, a powerful section of the Ten- 
nessee people, led by Andrew Johnson, a great Senator belonging 
to the same party, confronted Governor Harris in his policy of 
secession. 

We need not dwell upon the details of that struggle, but it is 
enough to say that the courage, tenacity, and generalship of 
Harris prevailed against the combined efforts of Whig and 
Democratic Union leaders in Tennessee and added that State to 
the number of those which constituted the Southern Confederacy. 

IsHAM G. Harris was one of the few public men of whom the 
people never seemed to tire. 

Ordinarily popularity is fleeting. The remarkable changes 
which come over the House and the Senate in the course of a 
single decade attest the instability of official tenure; but a few 
men seem proof against all disfavor. If they are ever criticised, 
their critics are forgotten; if condemned for a vote, they are for- 
given. To carry opposition to the point of actually defeating 
^56 



their reelection would be considered at home a sort of high treason. 
So strong is the general confidence in their high purpose and 
right judgment that it always prevails over minor difficulties 
when election day rolls around. 

Senator Harris was one of these rare characters. He was the 
hero not only of Tennessee but of Tennesseeans scattered through- 
out the Union. He grew, in their estimation, to be a sort of 
lineal successor to Andrew Jackson. His name and life and pe- 
culiarities always touched their enthusiasm. 

To me the most impressive thing in his strong individuality 
was his willingness always to take responsibility and his absolute 
unconcern about results— that cheerful faith that the right will 
take care of itself and that there need be no anxiety on the part of 
a public man except the anxiety to be right. 

I have seen men whom God had blessed with conscience and 
courage, but not with equanimity, so that, knowing the truth and 
voting the truth, they were still nervous that they should not be 
misunderstood and fidgeting about conseqtiences which they were 
determined to face. 

Not so with Senator Harris. He seemed to think that a man 
who acted truly upon his convictions of right held an absolute 
insurance policy against all disaster at the hands of the people. 

What a great life may be worked out on that sort of logic. You 
may put a small man in Congress, and if he looks at every ques- 
tion as it arises with a heart single and an eye single to finding 
out the right, in a few years such a dignity will be given to his 
apparent mediocrity that he will gradually emerge above the 
level of his fellows and assume a consideration in the country 
which will make men wonder at the secret of his rise. 

If men of moderate mind can be thus lifted by the practice of 
simple straightforwardness, how splendid becomes the principle 
when it acts on a man of native intellectual power and force of 
character! This was the combination in the case of Isham G. 
Harris. He was always clear, always firm, always true, always 
great. 

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